FREE SOLO — a form of technical ice or rock climbing where climbers (or free soloists) climb alone without ropes, harnesses or other protective equipment, forcing them to rely on their own individual strength and skill.

GENESIS

JJ gritted her teeth with effort as she fit her aching fingers, dusted with climbing chalk that she'd already began to sweat off, into a groove in the rock while her feet found convenient footholds within reach and levered herself into a comfortable resting position where she could take one hand off the sheer rock face. Wiping the sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand, she glowered down at the sprawling view Yosemite National Park had to offer. But the dizzying view beyond the 1000-foot drop below her couldn't compare to the 2000 feet she had left to ascend.

Nobody had managed to scale El Capitan the entire way without the safety net of protective equipment, and yet here she was, doing it free solo. According to Coach Wymack, this granite monolith had witnessed the deaths of over thirty climbers. Experienced ones, too.

But JJ wasn't going to be one of them. She had a feeling, working its way deep in her bones. Something impossible was going to happen today, and once she was back on terra firma, she would be the first person to have ever free soloed the route to completion, as well as the youngest—at sixteen—to have ever attempted it. In the days leading up to this, JJ had spent hours pouring over the geography of El Capitan with her climbing coach, who was a regular free soloist, analysing every possible handhold and angle, marking out her footholds and tracing out the route, so much so she had the entire thing ingrained in the back of her eyelids. She could recite every move backwards in her sleep. This wasn't her first free solo, but pre-planning was still crucial.

In the distance, a bird squalled like it was trying to wake something beneath the ground, but JJ barely heard it over the roar of her heartbeat in her ears as her heart pounded feverishly against her ribs.

The midday sun bore down on her back, searing the skin exposed by her black tank top and leggings. Sweat had gathered in places unideal to her situation. Especially in her climbing shoes, which felt like they'd been melded into the soles of her heat-swollen feet. By the end of this, JJ was certain Olivia would be having a field day making fun of her tan lines and the vibrant flush of her sunburnt skin. Right now JJ just wanted a breeze to distract her from the oppressive summer humidity, but the air remained stagnant, honey-thick heatwaves rising from the rock face threatening to melt her flesh off her bones. Every muscle ached, screaming in protest with every little shift of her weight. Her tongue felt like sandpaper in her mouth.

Reaching behind her and dipping a clammy hand into the chalk bag clipped to her waist, JJ sucked in deep breaths to calm her heaving chest.

Despite the heat, Yosemite had been fairly populated since the sunrise, but JJ thought it was pure luck that nobody seemed keen on scaling El Capitan, so she was alone. She'd spent everyday for a month gearing herself up for this trip, ever since Dinah, Olivia's girlfriend (long-term in the sense that they were practically married), had announced that she had been granted a week-long vacation from work in the first week of summer, and wanted to spend it all on a getaway trip with Olivia. Since Olivia had been unwilling to leave JJ alone in their apartment back in Gotham City, considering Dinah's line of work left her a laundry list of ruthless enemies, JJ had been dragged into their plans. And because JJ was sacrificing a small fraction of her summer, she got to have the last vote on the location.

The only other downside, besides having to third wheel her sister and aforementioned girlfriend on their honeymoon-esque holiday (it wasn't enough that they already lived together), was that there was nothing much to do in California. JJ hated the beach, and she wasn't interested in the visiting tourist attractions. There were no bouldering gyms or libraries within half a mile radius of their hotel. Regardless, JJ had marked out her goal for this trip. For the better part of the week, she'd been off doing her own thing while Dinah and Olivia did couple things.

"Two thousand feet left to go," JJ huffed, her breath coming out in hisses through her gritted teeth as she crimped her fingers around a tight hold and heaved herself further up the rock face. "No biggie."

Somehow, looking up sent a stronger wave of vertigo over her. Two thousand feet upward. She was already one-third of the way there. With no rope and no other protective equipment securing her life, going back down the way she came was not an option. Commitment was never a problem for JJ, though, especially to problems like these. Commit and go. Growing up, she'd lost count of how many times her past rock climbing coaches had screamed that at her while she'd been working out a problem on the wall. Enough times, she supposed, that it'd been drilled into every fibre of her being.

Julien Jones. First and youngest person to successfully conquer 3000ft monstrosity El Capitan, no rope or harness required. JJ could already taste the world record she'd be setting, the headlines that would highlight her name. Show the world she was bigger than some high school rock climbing team—who, much to her chagrin, were complete wastes of oxygen, and they knew how she felt about them. It didn't matter, though. She was going to be Julien Jones, the girl who defied gravity.

Inch by inch, she crawled her way up.

Although, it seems she'd spoken too soon.

A couple paces up, JJ spotted a generous, jug-like handhold, a whole ledge carved out across the rock face. Stretching herself out as far as she could go wasn't a viable plan, considering she fell too many inches short. If she dyno-ed for it, she could definitely reach it. That wasn't part of the plan, but it seems that Coach Wymack had failed to catch this small but critical error in their analysis. No matter, JJ was confident she could make it. Plus, it was a nice hold, anyway. Dipping her hands in her chalk bag one-by-one until they both came out completely powder white and dry, JJ tested her footholds and handholds. They were solid under her unrelenting grip. Now, the only factor she needed to test was precision. Granted, that part needed to be trusted in order to be tested.

She lined herself up for the jump.

Inhale.

Exhale.

Without thinking twice, JJ threw all her strength into the move.

It happened almost in stop motion.

Frame one: her hand, outstretched, muscles rippling with the movement, the momentum carrying her upward. Frame two: fingers latching around the corner of the ledge. Frame three: dust flying from the impact. Frame four: her grip slipping, fingers leaving a trail of white, a pasty mix of chalk and sweat, on the ledge. Frame five: eyes widening as the realisation of her fate dawns on her, horror staking through her chest. Frame six: mouth parted in a silent scream as her feet hit the footholds with a dead accuracy but her hands scrambled for purchase that would not give. Frame seven: falling.

Time turned its back on her as she fell. As she dropped like a stone from over a thousand feet up. As her stomach lurched and her heart threatened to punch out of her chest. Fear turned her blood to slush as the wind roared in her ears. Her ears popped. The world couldn't stop spinning as she tumbled through the air. Her eyes stung as the wind pummelled her face. Her arms pinwheeled, hands scrambling to grab ahold of something. Anything. But there was nothing but thin air.

This was it. Death was seconds away. In a moment, if the sudden change in pressure wouldn't kill her, then the ground would. There was no surviving this fall, JJ was certain of it.

Hubris had led her here.

But JJ couldn't stop hoping, a last ditch attempt at salvation.

Even though she wasn't religious, even though she never believed in anything but herself, because she was desperate, because she didn't mean for it to end like this, she kept praying for something to stop her fall. Kept fervently wishing time would stop. Kept scrambling to hold onto something solid even though there was nothing so she could stop her free fall. Stop, stop, stop. I don't wanna die, JJ thought, as she caught a glimpse of the ground rushing up to her. She squeezed her watering eyes shut. Don't let me die. Just give me something. Stop my fall. Don't let me die. Please, please, please.

The funny thing was that, by some miracle, it worked. Like someone had pressed a pause button on a TV remote, time froze.

JJ cracked her eyes open. A string of acidic expletives flew out of her mouth.

Around her, a bubble of pure energy shimmered blue-white in the sunlight hitting the surface, encasing her body like a protective chrysalis hovering inches off the ground. JJ was floating in the centre of it, arms outstretched, wild strands of her short hair falling around her shoulders in slow motion. The air felt too rigid, somehow, like she had been frozen in stasis. How? How was she alive? How wasn't she blood and brains and bones shattered to smithereens on the ground by now?

Quickly, the adrenaline bled from her veins. With an electrical hum, the bubble vanished, and JJ hit the ground with a dull thud, flattening the patch of flowers beneath her. A wheeze escaped her lips and she rolled onto her back, testing every finger, toe, joint, and rib. Still in shock, but uninjured. Unscathed. Untouched. Well, except for the ridiculous sunburn she'd sustained and the blisters she'd torn in her hands from her ascent up El Capitan.

It shouldn't have been possible to survive all that, shouldn't have been possible for her to have conjured this, whatever it was, but everything about today had been impossible.

And JJ knew, in the back of her mind, that perhaps attributing this... thing as a miracle was a little bit misleading.

Genetic predisposition determined the trajectory of everyone's lives. If someone had that special factor in them, say someone born with powers because their parents had special abilities—supernatural, superhuman abilities—they instantly had more power over the rest of the human population. They were no longer normal. And they knew it. They might have to face the inevitable conundrum of which life to live: use that ability for good or for evil.

Before they died, renowned Justice League superheroes Lightbringer and Alleycat, known to close friends as Alistair and Emma Jones, had accomplished a great number of things. Amidst their proudest achievements, two daughters were born nine years apart. Surprisingly, neither had been accidents. JJ learned that the night after the museum exploded and her parents hadn't made it out of the rubble and ruin. Like everything within the vicinity, they hadn't escaped destruction in one piece. It turns out that neither harnessing the power of the sun nor enhanced reflexes could save you from the Joker.

Olivia's superpowers had grown in before she'd become JJ's legal guardian since she was already twenty-two and earning a stable income from their grandmother's bakery. Unlike their parents, Olivia hadn't chosen the fight against evil. Nor had she chosen to play villain. Retractible extra arms were handy for baking, though, and nothing more. Olivia had always been good at multitasking. From juggling multiple projects alongside managing their grandmother's bakery and caring for JJ, Olivia was already a wonder without being a freak of nature. The extra arms sprouting from her sides at will were a nice touch.

JJ, on the other hand, had never had the chance to choose. Everyone had assumed she was the anomaly. The normal kid. Her powers had been untested, and JJ was never interested in finding out unless it helped her with rock climbing, even less so after her parents never made it home. She'd always felt as though any sign of abnormality awakened in her would tether her more to her dead parents. The grieving period was over. Against Olivia's suggestions to deal with it in a healthy way, she'd stuffed her feelings in a box that'd been locked up in a forgotten corner of her mind. All Olivia wanted to do was talk about it. But JJ was sick of lip service. Repression worked fine for her. JJ didn't feel like undoing the latch on that one.

Letting out a shaky breath, JJ struggled to her feet, brushed bits of grass and dirt and petals off her clothes, checked for her chalk bag, which, to her relief, was still secured around her waist with everything intact, shot one glance over her shoulder at El Capitan, looming over her like a pillar of judgement, a reminder of the impossible.

And then she walked away.

✷

WELL, SHE HADN'T WALKED AWAY, exactly. A quick inventory of her injuries told of ruined hands, broken skin where the blisters had burst from abrasion on the rock face, and her body was starting to ache like she'd been hit by a cement truck. Moving hurt. Everything stung or screamed in protest. When she'd returned to her room, she took her own sweet time running a bath and soaking in the ice-cold water to draw the heat out. She had been unable to take the shower spray because it rained agony on her sunburnt skin. She barely had the energy to tape up her open wounds and slick muscle tape over her right shoulder and down the side of her leg where her quads began to feel overstretched.

Thankfully, nobody had seen her fall. Which meant nobody had witnessed the thing that'd happened to stop it. JJ wasn't exactly sure what to call it. It was many things and yet it was none of them. Luck, phenomenon, miracle—it could've been either of those, and yet JJ didn't think those words could be used to describe what had happened. What had saved her. Nonetheless, JJ chose to focus more on the fact that there had been no witnesses, which was fairly comforting in that nobody was ready to break down her door demanding she help save the world. That much became evident at dinner with Dinah and Olivia, who, an hour before they'd left for the restaurant, had taken one look at JJ when she'd popped her head into JJ's hotel room (no way was she sharing with the couple) and burst out laughing without ceremony.

"Did you fall asleep while sun tanning or what?" Olivia cackled, thumping a fist against the doorframe, wiping tears from her eyes. "You look like a traffic cone."

"I hate you." Her tone was flat, bordering on miserable. She wasn't in the mood to entertain Olivia's mockery. Lying on her stomach on her bed, JJ lifted her head off the pillow and scowled at her older sister. Just before she'd taken a shower, the mirror had made her very well aware of how stupid she looked. Her skin, where her tank top hadn't covered, was an angry pink. Brushing up against her sheets sent sparks of agony through her skin. Perhaps the real miracle of today had been the fact that she hadn't blistered yet.

Smirking, Olivia crossed her arms over her chest and JJ caught the glister of a necklace she hadn't seen before resting against her collarbones. Must be new. Must be a gift from Dinah. "We're thinking of burgers tonight. Thoughts? Or, we could get seafood, if you'd like. You could reunite with your lobster friends—"

"Burgers are fine, now get out," JJ snapped, irritation prickling her veins.

Running her hands through her dark hair, smooth as black silk, and raking it into a messy bun atop her head, Olivia sneered, and though her features were sharp, they weren't cruel. "Great. We leave in an hour. That cool with you?—" JJ made a vague, guttural noise of assent in the back of her throat—"Okay, you big baby. I'll get you some cream for your skin."

Olivia came back five minutes later with a tube of aloe gel and said that that was the best she could get for now, but not to worry, Little Lobster, maybe next time you'll learn how to fucking apply sunscreen before doing any outdoor activities. To which JJ had blindly reached for the closest thing on her nightstand and hurled it at her. Whatever she'd thrown would've shattered against the wall had Olivia not grown a third arm and caught the object in the nick of time. When JJ looked up from her phone, the object she'd thrown wouldn't have been collateral damage at all. Olivia had caught JJ's unused tube of sunscreen. The irony hadn't been lost on her.

At dinner, Dinah and Olivia let JJ drag them over to a booth in the corner of the diner.

"So," Olivia began, folding her arms over the edge of the table after the waitress had taken their orders. "What'd you do today, kid?"

And JJ told her, first, that she wasn't a kid, she was sixteen, and then, everything. About how she'd risen with the sun this morning to stretch out and map out El Capitan for the last time before she began her ascent, about the world record she was about to set, about every premeditated move, about the month prior to this trip wherein she'd spent her days studying this rock face, and about the three days before today she'd spent looking up El Capitan free soloing videos on Youtube. She'd skimmed the details of the rest. About the fall, to which Olivia had audibly gasped, and Dinah's brow had lifted in a sudden bloom of interest, about the thing that'd happened. The bubble of energy, the white-blue sheen, the sensation of stasis, how time itself had stopped when she'd asked—or, more accurately, how gravity had released its hold on her when she'd needed it to. She didn't know how to describe it. How do you compartmentalise such a thing? How do you tell someone that the laws of physics could be bent? That the world as they see it hadn't changed yet you knew deep down that you have.

Tucking a lock of her luscious blonde hair behind a delicate ear, Dinah sat up a little straighter. "This... forcefield—you said it just happened? You didn't feel anything?"

"No. I was falling one moment, then the next I'm just... I just stopped. I wasn't on the ground, maybe a whole foot above it, but it felt secure. I was weightless. Not really flying, but kind of like... you know when you see those space station astronauts floating around in youtube videos while they're in space? Kind of like that. But inside this bubble thing. I don't know what it was, exactly, but it was weird. And it was me."

Olivia let out a thrilled hum. "Kind of like the daughter in The Incredibles. I forgot her name."

"Zero-g. I'm familiar." Dinah pinned her with a contemplative look. JJ felt the intensity of her gaze prickle her skin. "Can you show me?"

"I'm not sure I can," JJ admitted, shrugging, picking at a piece of rock climbing tape wound around the middle of her index finger, covering a bloody blister that'd popped on the way up El Capitan. "I mean, it's not like there's an on-and-off switch I can use to activate or deactivate it."

Dinah sent her a soft smile. "It's alright. We can work on it."

"Told you you were a freak, too." Grinning, Olivia nudged JJ, who fought down a wince.

Bemused, JJ rolled her eyes, massaging a throbbing ache in her bicep. Slowly, her muscles were beginning to feel fully saturated in the effects of the climb. Every movement was fire under her skin, a blinding, white-hot pain shooting through her body. But this was how she knew this was all real. This was how she knew she was alive.

By the time the waitress returned with their food, though, the conversation had derailed to what Olivia and Dinah had been up to the entire day and the subject of JJ's newfound ability had been dropped. Forgotten, almost.

✷

HERE'S THE THING: JJ wasn't stupid or suicidal. Obsessive and demanding and intolerant, perhaps, but definitely not stupid or suicidal.

Despite that, she found herself lying awake at night waiting for the world to fall into its silent slumber, listening for the sounds of conversation on the other side of the wall, where Dinah and Olivia had the adjacent hotel room to themselves, to die down. When it did, when JJ was certain Dinah and Olivia had fallen asleep, she threw off the covers, already fully changed beneath them in a big blue hoodie (a relict of her father's) and black leggings, shoved her feet into a pair of black Converse sneakers, and slipped out of her hotel room. Once she was in the clear, out of the hotel, where the summer heat rose from the ground in seismic waves, JJ broke into a sprint towards Yosemite.

It was dark out and the shadows fell over her like a pile of ghosts, but the park was generously lit by the orange luminescent glow of lamps.

Next to a wooden park bench, JJ spotted a boulder twice her height next to an outcrop of trees and flowering bushes. Without hesitation, she scrambled to the top. It was a little daunting, standing up there, looking down, but she's fallen from high before.

Yeah, the rational part of her mind drawled, onto crash mats specifically designed to absorb impact and minimise injuries.

Letting out a slow exhale, JJ swung her arms a little, and then she leaped.

And hit the ground on both feet before dropping into a roll to absorb the impact.

Nothing happened. JJ's lip twisted as she straightened up and brushed the dirt off her knees. Maybe she hadn't been thinking about it. That was the problem. Maybe she needed to think of a trigger word...

On her second try, she jumped with her arms outstretched. Shield? JJ thought, before hitting the ground again, and falling flat on her ass. Not stopping to wallow in the failure, JJ tried again. And again. And again, On her seventh attempt, she tipped her head to the dark sky, a cloudless abyss staring back at her, and begged for something to happen. Begged for the shine of the forcefield, a minute's pause in the air. Even the smallest sign that something had happened—something she'd made happen—this afternoon, she'd take it. Anything to prove that she wasn't going insane. Still, she landed on her feet, and instead of getting up, JJ rocked back and splayed her limbs out in the grass. Frustration dug its way through her veins as she let out a small growl. Why wasn't it working? Why wasn't anything working?

She was ready to head back to the hotel and admit defeat, ready to tell Olivia and Dinah that this afternoon was a fluke, when the thought struck her. Realisation was a bucket of ice water to the head. It dawned on her, in the moment, that she'd been in mortal danger when she'd somehow managed to generate the forcefield. Her body's fight or flight response had been activated in that time of duress. Right now her environment was too controlled. Her safety had always been guaranteed.

That's how she found herself on the roof of her hotel, which had begun to stick out in the darkness like an unholy tooth, with nothing but the white noise of slow, midnight traffic near Yosemite permeating the silence. Somewhere far off, a coyote howled, and the moon glowered down at her like an unholy tooth, a bulbous yellow blister in need of lancing.

Standing on the ledge, the white ends of her sneakers poking over the edge, JJ stares down and the world below sways under her feet. This was different from free soloing. None of the endeavours had been about falling. It'd always been about going up. Falling was only a side-effect. Not a goal. This drop could kill her. If she jumped and it turned out today had been a one-off, then she'd be blood and guts on the ground.

JJ couldn't do that to Olivia.

She stepped back. And kept going. Didn't stop moving until she'd wandered out of the hotel, again, winding through the little pathways and miscellaneous trails in Yosemite, until she stopped at the top of an outcrop of rock overlooking a lake deep in the heart of the park, about 70 feet above the water. One advantage of it being dark enough was that nobody could see her. But the downside was that there was no way to know how deep or shallow that lake was, or if there were any rocks in there that she might break her spine on.

Still, it was better than the roof. It was her only shot. At least she had the possibility of swimming away.

Sucking in a deep breath, JJ shook out her limbs.

Then she jumped and prayed for something to catch her.

For a moment, time stalled as she hung suspended in air, and JJ thought: I did it!

And then she plunged like a sack of bricks into the freezing water. Immediately, the chill bit down to her bones and when she recovered from the split-second shock, JJ kicked upwards. When she broke the surface, spluttering and gasping, frustration tore through her like an inferno. With sharp strokes, she cut through the water, swam towards the dusty embankment and pulled herself out.

Again.

Soaking wet and dripping all over the place, JJ wrung as much water out of her clothes as she could, suppressing an involuntary shiver as a breeze brushed up against her. What had gone wrong? What had made that one time different from the many attempts other than the fact that all jumps tonight were intentional? What was she doing wrong? JJ didn't like leaving so many factors unknown. Her whole life had been built up on equations and formulas, working the best angle to get the job done most efficiently. Now, she was flailing around blindly in the dark, hoping to stick the jump but landing on empty.

All signs pointed to failure. And failure had always meant being sent home with no reward. But JJ was not a quitter, even less a failure, and she was not going home without something

And what was that she'd thought again as she'd fallen from El Capitan?

When she makes it to the top of the outcrop of rock, JJ bounces on the balls of her feet, shakes her limbs out, and lets out an explosive exhale. Something electric had come unstuck from her, surging through her veins in the moment's novel thrill. This was it, she thought. This is the one. Without thinking, she takes three running steps, shuts her eyes as she nears the end, and flings herself off the edge.

Stop my fall, she thought fervently. Stop time. Stop gravity. Stop my fall. Stop everything.

Time freezes.

JJ's eyes snap open.

And there it is.

A protective forcefield shimmering around her in a bubble hovering over the water, barely skimming the surface, a blue-white sheen winking back at her where the moonlight reflects off it. And here she is, floating in the centre, an ancient bug immortalised in amber glass. Weightless. Untouched.

She'd done it, again.

JJ let out a disbelieving exhale. As the adrenaline wore off, a low, electric hum filled her ears and the forcefield dissolved into thin air, as did the zero-g, and dropped her into the water with an indignant splash. When she resurfaced, ripples running over the lake, JJ smirked. Turns out she was more extraordinary than she'd thought.

AUTHOR'S NOTE.
JJ is basically every student athlete meme ever.

i'll say it once and i'll say it again JJ is an emotionally stunted ace, the Student Athlete™️ we all hate, and she is going to be so useless and insufferable and we're going to love her. are we clear?